An operating system (OS) comprises computer system software that directly controls and manages the computer system hardware and various other system operations. The OS also provides a platform upon which to run software applications, such as word processing programs and Web browsers.
An OS is subject to corruption and other types of damage which may render the OS useless. Accordingly, an OS image, which is a group of files that comprise various information pertaining to the OS (e.g., OS settings, OS updates), is regularly backed-up to storage. When the OS is damaged, the backed-up OS image is used to restore OS functionality. However, restoring the OS from the backed-up image can be via a process that is OS-specific and thus undesirably time-consuming and inconvenient.